Jeremiah 24

¹ Yahweh gave me a vision: set out in front of the Temple of Yahweh were two baskets of figs. This wasafter Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon had led Jeconiah son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, away into exile fromJerusalem, with the chief men of Judah, the blacksmiths and metalworkers, and had taken them to Babylon.

² One basket contained excellent figs, like those that ripen first; the other contained very bad figs, so badthey were uneatable.

³ Yahweh said to me, 'What do you see, Jeremiah?' 'Figs,' I answered, 'the good ones excel ent, the badones very bad, so bad as to be uneatable.'

⁴ Then the word of Yahweh was addressed to me,

⁵ 'Yahweh, the God of Israel, says this, "As these figs are good, so I mean to concern myself with thewelfare of the exiles of Judah whom I have sent from this place to the country of the Chaldaeans.

⁶ My eyes will watch over them for their good, to bring them back to this country, to build them up andnot to break them down, to plant them and not to uproot them.

⁷ I shal give them a heart to acknowledge that I am Yahweh. They wil be my people and I shal be theirGod, for they will return to me with all their heart.

⁸ As for the bad figs, the figs so bad as to be uneatable-yes, Yahweh says this -- that is how I shal treatZedekiah king of Judah, his chief men and what is left of Jerusalem, those who remain in this country and thoseliving in Egypt.

⁹ I shal make them an object of horror, a disaster, to all the kingdoms of the earth, a thing of shame, abyword, a laughing-stock, a curse, wherever I shal drive them.

¹⁰ Sword, famine and plague I shall send against them until they have vanished from the soil I gave tothem and to their ancestors." '